At the Personal Democracy Forum last week, Barely Political sent correspondent Amber Lee "Obama Girl" Ettinger to ask attendees what they though about technology's role in politics or something. Hobbyist pundit Craig Newmark, however, took the opportunity to show off some of his dance moves in a self-deprecating but probably less than insincere attempt to be Obama Boy. Newmark, however, will have to get in line — Obama's campaign has inspired more bromantic overtures than yesterday's pride parades.

Hookers and eBay, shares and cops. If Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, had an attorney on staff with them, would that have prevented questionable legal moves by the founder and CEO of the world's most reliable housemates and hookups platform?

While former Yahoo database engineer Jeremy Zawodny might prefer FriendFeed to Twitter, he'll be commuting to the offices of Craigslist from his home in San Jose. He was recruited via email by CTO Eric Scheide while still at Yahoo, and met with founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster before leaving Sunnyvale for the Inner Sunset. He'll help maintain and expand the company's ever-growing MySQL database. Because the last thing someone trying to sell a baby needs is for a PHP mysql_fetch_array() call to fail when posting their ad. (Photo by David Weekly)

"Free, popular and easy to use," says the Riverfront Times, Craigslist is "as close as America currently comes to the decriminalization of sex work." As part of an investigation into Internet prostitution, the St. Louis alt-weekly newspaper got on the same page with women in the trade who run client/escort message boards. Along with doing the usual decoding of acronyms (GFE, anyone?) and explaining what you get for $300 an hour, they got an earful from sex workers about where to get your start as an online escort. Valleywag readers won't need to even guess.

It's that time of year when institutions of higher learning heartlessly eject their seniors into the real world! Princeton grads were treated to the best speech of the season; Stephen Colbert delivered a zinger-filled address (above) in which he wisely reminded grads that "no one will ever, ever want to hear you sing a capella" outside college. How true. But plenty of other colleges tapped A through Z-list celebs to brace their soon-to-be-discharged students for entry into the workforce.

Craigslist has filed suit against eBay in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleging trademark infringement, breach of fiduciary duty, anti-competitve trade practices and deceptive advertising. Why California? Because the state has some of the strictest antitrust and competition trade laws in the country. Craigslist is asking the court to award damages and force eBay to divest from the online classifieds site. Also alleged? That eBay was a big meanie. The best parts:

At the party for Jonathan Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark couldn't settle for destroying San Francisco Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein's profession — he may be after Bronstein's woman, too:

Despite not making the cut for this year's Time 100, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales showed up at the magazine's party anyway. (Past honorees are reinvited to the party automatically.) Even more surprising: On his arm was Andrea Weckerle, the freelance public-relations professional long rumored to have been smitten with Wales. If this photo is an indication, her affections are less unrequited than has been said.

Really, I wasn't trying to be posh for the book party Arianna Huffington threw Saturday for Oxford scholar Jonathan Zittrain and his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It." I pulled up to Larry Ellison's Pacific Heights manse in a black Town Car because that's the only vehicle I was able to flag down in North Beach. Huffington, the pundit turned blog mogul, greeted me at the door and extracted a promise of my best behavior before allowing me in. (One wonders what these people think my worst behavior might be, and if they realize how tempting living down to their expectations is.)

Stanlee Gatti, the former San Francisco arts commissioner, produced the event, which drew a crowd mixed with the Valley elite, San Francisco politicos, a gaggle of YouTubers, and oddball geek pals of Zittrain. Oh, and some grubby hacks like yours truly. Melanie Ellison, the romance novelist and wife of Oracle CEO Larry, went to high school with Zittrain, it turns out. That's the kind of it's-a-small-world connection the local press corps loves to make a big deal about. But even if Zittrain didn't have this chance connection to the Valley's movers and shakers, I'd think he'd be drawing attention from its inner circle anyway.

In the wake of eBay's suit against Craiglist, we get a touch more fear and loathing from a newspaper about the online classifieds site and local bulletin board from the Times:

Jim Buckmaster has just set himself up for a messy court fight. Responding to eBay's lawsuit against Craigslist and its board — the board being Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark — he has claimed that he and Newmark issued additional shares in the company to themselves "for the sake of protecting the long term well-being of the Craigslist community." Let's leave aside the question of how the community benefits from Buckmaster and Newmark increasing their ownership. Craigslist is registered as a for-profit company; as such, its only legal responsibility is to its shareholders, not its users.

eBay's lawsuit against Craigslist, alleging that founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster conspired to squeeze eBay out of the company, is fascinating for many reasons. It reveals Buckmaster and Newmark's naked greed: They issued shares of the company to themselves to increase their stakes and decrease eBay's.But it also shows how tight the two have been with Craigslist's workers. eBay owns, or owned 28.4 percent of the company, a stake acquired from early Craigslist employee Philip Knowlton. Knowlton sold his shares in part because Buckmaster and Newmark were trying to squeeze him out, too. (Are you beginning to see a pattern?) The two, acting as Craigslist's board of directors, issued themselves one new share for every five they already owned, a move which pushed eBay's ownership stake down to 24.85 percent — a level which, among other things, eliminated eBay's ability to elect a director for the company. Do the math, and it becomes clear that Craigslist's other shareholders — presumably its employees — own about 3.3 percent of the company. That's a miserably small portion of equity to give employees of a tech startup; normally, about 20 percent of a company's equity is reserved for employees.

The text of eBay's complaint filed in a Delaware court [PDF] has made its way online, and in it, eBay "seeks equitable and legal relief" from Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark for:

On tour in Israel, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark presents a young admirer with a gift. Got a better headline? Leave it in the comments.

Expect a rash of headlines accusing auction giant eBay of bullying saintly Craig Newmark. eBay has sued Newmark, his business partner Jim Buckmaster, and Craigslist. The charge? Craigslist has allegedly diluted eBay's 28.4 percent stake in the company, which the auction giant acquired from a former Craigslist employee. The part of the story Newmark and Buckmaster don't want anyone to hear: The pair made about $16 million in the process of letting eBay buy the stake in their company. The deal included a shareholder-rights agreement which ought to prevent Craigslist from diluting eBay's stake in the company, people familiar with the deal have told Valleywag. By squeezing out eBay, Newmark and Buckmaster appear to be having their cake and eating it too. Relations between the companies had already deteriorated: eBay had a seat on the Craigslist board, at one point occupied by founder Pierre Omidyar, until last year.

Craig's List founder Craig Newmark is in Israel for a conference and his roomate is Robert Scoble. What happens when you room with the Scobleizer? He convinces you to sign up for Twitter. [Twitter]

Disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget pauses to dream up a fantasy valuation for Craigslist, and comes up with $5 billion. The numbers he relies on are faulty, starting with Craigslist's revenues. Blodget relies on a recent report by Classified Intelligence, which pegs its revenues for 2008 at an estimated $81 million. That's extremely low; insiders tell me the real figure for last year was in the range of $100 million to $150 million.

Yahoo's new site for women, Shine, began life with a link to The Phoenix's 100 Unsexiest Men of The Year. OK, fine, we clicked. But then we were astounded to find the list contained only 4 percent geek. Further, the unattractiveness of those who made the list, such Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, was, frankly, insultingly underrated. Also, the whole list was out of order. Below, a poll where you can help us rerank both the geeks already on the list, and those who should have made it. Rachel Marsden, your assistance in this matter would be appreciated.

What do the people of Oregon have against Craiglist founder Craig Newmark? Start with Robert Salisbury, of Jacksonville, Oregon. The other day, Salisbury came home to find 30 people going through his stuff and walking away with whatever they wanted. Salisbury tried to protest, but the grubbers just brushed him off. One finally handed him an advertisement printed off Craigslist. It listed Salisbury's address and said all his belongings were up for grabs.

Saintly Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist website is a friend to the apartmentless and lovelorn, has a confession to make: As we reported last year, his company helped broker eBay's purchase of a 25 percent stake in Craigslist — a transaction which made him millions of dollars. Newmark made this admission to Sarah Lacy in a Yahoo Tech Ticker interview, excerpted above. This is notable only because Newmark has long peddled the line to gullible journalists that eBay bought the stake out from under his nose without his consent, casting aspersions on the ex-employee who sold the stake along the way. Note how he dodges the key question — did he profit from the sale? According to Valleywag's sources, he did. But we'll give Newmark a pass on coughing up that fact until the next interview.